The Natural End of Things
by BetsunoNeko
Summary: He could live with never having Christophe the way he wanted. Gregory knew he had to. But he needed the dirty, crazy, reckless Frenchman in his life. He simply could not bear the thought of being without him. So, naturally, the reality of it all hit him like a train as he stood stock still on the tracks. "I'm leaving. Live a good life, Gregory." [Multichap Gregstophe]


One

Who Are You?

The graduation ceremony was grueling and hands down one of the most agonizing experiences of Gregory Williams' life. He wasn't really looking forward to anything. He didn't have very exciting future plans, he wasn't racing to escape the clutches of domineering parents, and he wasn't teeming with the prospects of thrilling independence or impending adulthood. All Gregory really wanted to do was find his best friend and go have a smoke.

Christophe DeLorne had dropped out a semester earlier. Shame, too. It's not that Christophe wasn't a smart boy—oh God no, he's incredibly intelligent, just not book smart or the bookish type at all. He wouldn't tell Gregory why he dropped out, in the end. Gregory didn't push too much, either. He knows Christophe's limitations. They'd practically known each other since their infant years, anyways.

By the time Gregory had escaped the congratulations of school mates, teachers, and assorted family members on his valedictorian status and was safely in the faintly floral smelling confines of his car, he was practically itching for a cigarette.

Damn Christophe for getting him hooked on those… those cancer sticks.

But he could never really stay mad at the boy. He loved him. Loved him like he thought it would tear him up inside. And not a brotherly love, either. But he'd be damned if he ever said it. God no.

Within five minutes he was at Christophe's house. His mother was rarely home and today was no exception. Still in his graduation garb (minus the ridiculous hat), Gregory used his spare key to entire the modest, liquor and smoke smelling home, calling out his dearest friend's name. He was greeted with a ringing silence.

In the basement, Christophe's section of the house, held to the front of the fridge in blue painters tape, was a sheet of yellow legal-pad paper, the kind Christophe often used to take notes on for various… _jobs. _

Written in Christophe's unmistakable small and blocky handwriting were the simplest eight words and the most tragic Gregory would ever read. In the fatal seconds it took to read the note, his heart had split into a billion little pieces and the air had been strangled out of him. He could live with never having Christophe the way he wanted. Gregory knew he had to. But he needed the dirty, crazy, reckless Frenchman in his life. He simply could not bear the thought. So, naturally, the reality of it all hit him like a train as he stood stock still on the tracks.

_I'm leaving. Live a good life, Gregory. _

_-Mole_

And maybe, just to spite him, he'd do just that. It's funny, where people end up.

* * *

Gregory straightens his tie in the full length mirror of his studio apartment to utter perfection. The art of undercover work is meticulous and Gregory is nothing if not a man of detail. It is his job, after all.

The man he is preparing to meet is maybe one of the worst alive. Absolute filth. The worst of the worst. The vilest of the vile. The blonde Englishman thrums with excitement at what the end of his night will entail. He packed his bags carefully. If there's one thing he hates, its being unprepared.

The night should flow smoothly. After six months of working his way into the criminal organization known as Guild 45, he was finally attending one of their monthly meetings. The types of criminals in Guild 45 range from human traffickers to the head honchos of drug cartels to assassins.

Their meetings last approximately one hour, beginning at eleven on the dot and ending at twelve on the dot. He arrives at ten forty five and walks into the large, open hall in the four star hotel at exactly ten fifty five. The other eleven members arrive and the customary toast is made. As not to raise suspicion, Gregory drinks with the others. He's already taken the antidote in his car on the way over. All will be well.

Everything is going just as he planned, perfectly. Down to every fine detail.

At eleven fifty five the smallest of noises from outside the doors sends every head in the room turning to attention. A few men automatically draw their guns.

Gregory hardly hesitates to draw his weapon when the door handle turns ever so slowly.

Something inhumanly fast bursts through the barely open doors and sends one of the men flying backwards, his neck making a sickening crunch upon impact with the side of the table as he crumbles.

Gunfire erupts and Gregory dives under the table. His target his target—where?

One of the men shouts and there's a sickening squelch, like someone cracking an egg with a hammer. More gunfire. In a sudden inexplicable lull of silence someone _squeaks_ before a silencer pops.

There's one more thud and something—someone… _it- _jumps off the table. Black knee high boots with crimson red laces come into Gregory's view. A silver crowbar with a dripping red tip catches the florescent light and drags across the floor. The feet move. It occurs to Gregory, finally, that they're counting the bodies.

_Eleven, not twelve. _

Gregory fires a grazing shot into the left calf of the booted figure. They fall face forward, catching themselves on their hands and letting out a soft, shocked gasp. Gregory's hand shoots out quickly and he wraps it around the ankle of the wounded leg, dragging the attacker under the table and out to the other side all too easily.

The figure is small, alarmingly small and quickly wriggles loose enough to roll onto their back, firing one silenced shot into Gregory's right shoulder. He cries out in sharp pain as the bullet tears through his shoulder. His vision quickly goes white almost the second he's sure that the figure is now pinned under his knee. Despite the fiery pain, he knocks the gun away from the form beneath him, clad entirely in black with a dark red, leather mask, zipping up the back.

The room is oddly silent as the metallic scent of blood begins to mingle with the overpowering scent of whiskey and starch. The only noise is the filter of the fish tank behind them and their labored breaths.

Gregory presses the gun to the back of his attacker's head.

"Agent Rowans, FBI," Gregory says.

The breathing of the figure below him stops all together followed swiftly by an abrupt, soft, and definitely female, "Bullshit." There's a hint of an accent to the voice that Gregory can't quite pick out. The gender of the attacker surprises him for a brief second.

"True. Who are you?" He demands, the increasing pain making him grow angrier by the second. Gregory hates losing control.

"You fucking shot me," the girl says and then adds, as an afterthought, "Prick."

"I'm losing patience and blood. I'll ask one more time. Who are you?" Gregory growls, loathing how his accent automatically makes his threats sound half as intimidating. The girl beneath him says nothing. Gregory increases the pressure holding her to the floor. Her breathing quickly turns shallow.

"Fuck you!" she snaps.

Gregory lets the cold metal of the gun push down further into the base of her skull. The girl stiffens like a board beneath him. He doesn't need words at this point.

The girl lets out a breath. He thinks he has her. Gregory doesn't mess up. But then—with a burst of unnatural strength for a person of her size, the girl bucks upwards, sending Gregory reeling backwards, taken off guard. In that fraction of a second the girl wriggles away and is standing, scrambling for the abandoned crowbar, skin seemingly steaming under the mask.

Gregory fires again. He misses but the shot is enough to send the attacker ducking behind a chair. Sirens echo far off in the distance.

Gregory's vision blurs as the pain in his shoulder starts to become too much. He faintly hears the girl curse. There's a few more minutes of tense, heavy silence before she speaks.

"I'm fifteen," she says quietly.

"Oh."

That was about the time Gregory and him started—_oh. Don't go there. Not now. _

"I'm in tenth grade."

"Oh."

"I just got my permit… and a car. It's the blue sedan in the west wing parking garage around the corner. Floor three. _Hello Kitty_ bumper sticker."

"_Oh._"

He hears her shift and then she's standing, slowly, tentatively. The door to the room opens and then shuts. Gregory sits for a moment, letting the pain flow over him before quickly following suit. The night air is cold and oh-so painful against the raw, pulsing flesh of his bullet wound. It oozes burning blood steadily that runs between his fingers and stains them an ugly color. The walk to the garage takes longer than he had hoped.

By the time a blue sedan with a bumper sticker comes into view, Gregory feels like death.

He tentatively opens the passenger's door and slips inside. The soothing voice of a female singer at a low volume fills the otherwise silent car. A black bandana drops into Gregory's lap which he quickly presses against his freely bleeding wound.

Only when the car is pulling out of the parking garage at a steady pace does he glance at the driver.

In the driver's seat is a short, thin, astonishingly fair skinned girl in a baggy red V-neck and blue jeans. A curly head of brown hair cut into a bob frames her small face perfectly and the neon city lights catch the small dusting of freckles on her arms and make them pop. Gregory feels faint when he sees her eyes. They're a deep, forest green with hints of emerald and so achingly familiar that is sends a sharp pain through Gregory's chest. _So much like his…_

Fifteen years and those eyes still haunt him.

"This band is called _Metric,_" the girl says. Her voice is surprisingly, eerily calm. Her skin still looks vaguely to be steaming in the low light of the car.

Gregory manages a low hum in response.

The girl's fingers tap along gently against the steering wheel to the beat of the low key song.

"Your leg, is it alright?" Gregory asks feeling bizarrely out of place… or like a half-drowned rat.

"I've had worse. Broke my arm on the monkey bars once in elementary school." The track changes and a piano melody fills the car. "You're British?"

"Yes. And you? You have an accent but I can't seem to tell what it is."

The girl chuckles lightly. "My father is French. I'm fluent but my English is better."

Gregory's entire body throbs and his vision swims. He finds himself cursing God in his head for the series of unfortunate coincidences and mistakes tonight. His brain has never seemed to be able to grasp the fact that all French people are not his long lost childhood friend and that not all brunettes are somehow copies of the same man, sent to torment him.

"Ah. I see."

The girl pulls into the parking lot of a _Waffle House _and reaches across Gregory to take out a first aid kit from the glove box.

"Do you need help dressing that?" she asks casually, not even sparing a glance to her own leg.

"No, thank you." He does, though, pause to wrap the injury and make sure the bleeding has slowed.

"I appreciate the… not killing me thing," she says, staring straight ahead.

"The feeling is mutual…?"

"L is fine, for reasons I'm sure you understand, mister… what was it? _Agent Rowans?_" The girl, L, says with a chuckle.

"Yardale, if you prefer, then." There's another stiff moment of silence. "If I might ask, what was a girl such as yourself doing in a place like that?"

"Starbucks wouldn't hire me," she says with a lopsided smile. "Speaking of which… judging by your appearance, I'd guess you're very… well acquainted?" The girl hands him a green sticky note. "My contact info if something happens to… drop into your lap. Just no Tuesday nights. I have piano on Tuesdays. Now get out of my car, I have a curfew."

Gregory, reeling, in pain and feeling awfully sick does just that, watching the strange, eerily familiar girl drive off. He stands for a while before heading off to find a bus stop to take him home.

* * *

A blue sedan rolls quietly into a suburban neighborhood around two thirty in the morning. A short haired brunette in a red tee with a silver iphone in hand and keys in the other braces one leg on the fence of her backyard and pulls herself up with little effort, swinging one leg around and dropping down on the other side.

As she moves toward the back door and sees a faint light on beyond it she utters a soft, "shit", and slides in the warm, cinnamon smelling house.

"You are past curfew," a gruff voice says as she enters the kitchen, dropping her keys on the counter by the toaster.

"I know…" she murmurs, toeing off her sneakers and walking into the living room softly, approaching the chair farthest from the front door. She drapes herself over it, hugging the man inside from behind.

"What time deed I tell you?"

The girl sighs. "_Minuit, papa." _

"What time ees eet now, Ellie?"

"Almost three…"

The man sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face. "I do not like you staying out zis late, Elinore. Eet ees not safe."

"Mm. I know. I'm careful. Plus I was with friends…" In the warm darkness of the house, Elinore finds herself getting a little drowsy. "Did you wait up the whole time?"

There's a pause. "Was eet at least a good party?"

She laughs. "_Oui. Très drôle."_

"_Allez au lit, maintenant," _the man growls. She laughs again before kissing him briefly on the temple and walking down the hall to her bedroom.

Christophe waits up for a while longer.

* * *

_X_

French: -_Minuit, papa: _midnight, daddy.

-_Oui. __Très drôle: _Yes. Very fun.

-_Allez au lit, maintenant: _Go to bed, now.

X- I've had this idea in my head for a while now. Hey, what if Christophe was a single father? And why not make it a teenage girl, for shits and giggles? Thus this was born. I'm not a huge fan of OC's in fics, but she (Elinore) is kinda' essential to the story line, as you can probably tell. She will by no means be the main character, I assure you. Main pairing is Gregstophe... rating is subject to change. Feedback, please? Reviews, favorites, and follows are appreciated. Hope you enjoyed~

X- Soundtrack- _Youth Without Youth: Metric. _


End file.
